Drawing Everyday
I love the PechaKucha format: showing 20 images and talking about each one for 20 seconds. Fortunately there is an active PechaKucha group in Providence that organizes a monthly event: (https://www.facebook.com/PechaKuchaPVD
I have presented there twice, most recently on October 28, 2020. The theme was “Cabinet of Curiosities” and my presentation was based on twenty drawings that I had done in a one month period in 2011.
Here are the images I showed and the script I used to talk about them:
- Elvis and the baby
Elvis made a movie called The Trouble with Girls. It bombed badly. I’m bringing it up because Vincent Price was also in the movie and I’ll mention that again later. Isn’t that baby creepy?
2. The first appearance of Mr. Bill
“The Mr. Bill Show”, a crude combination of claymation and live action created by Walter Williams, got its start on Saturday Night Live. Mr. Bill’s first appearance occurred on February 28, 1976.
3. Black Cat
In writing the scrip for tonight, I Googled “Black Cat Fireworks” but instead of doing research, I ordered myself a Black Cat Fireworks tee shirt! I was hoping it would arrive in time to wear tonight, but no such luck.
4. Male nude
If you give any thought to the difference between pornography and erotica, and who doesn’t, spend some time comparing the artwork of Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. It’ll give you more to consider. A drawing based on Klimt is coming up.
5. Camel
I smoked when I was a teenager. Mostly I smoked Camels because it was my mother’s brand and I could swipe them from her. During that period, I was taking art classes and one of my favorite artists was Larry Rivers. He drew Camels a lot and I copied his drawings a lot.
6. Lionel boy
I had a very basic Lionel train set when I was a kid. It was set up to run around our Christmas tree every year. Watching it go in circles was pretty boring, but I loved to make it crash.
7. Cyclops
I got so many questions about this one. Is he a statue or sentient? Why is he so unresponsive to her advances? If he is a statue, why is she putting the moves on him? Is she Heady Lamar?
8. The most famous banana
In 1967, Lou Reed got Andy Warhol to design an album cover. Warhol’s design featured a sticker that was a realistic image of a banana. The sticker could be pull back to reveal a a more suggestive flesh-colored fruit underneath.
9. Bugs
When I was little, I had a Bugs Bunny Book that showed Bugs stealing carrots from Elmer Fudd’s garden in the dark of night. At the end of the row there is a scarecrow. The moon comes out and reveals that the scarecrow is actually Elmer with a shotgun. That moment scared the shit out of me.
10. Keep on truckin’
R. Crumb, The Grateful Dead, Jack Kerouac, Janis Joplin, Woodstock, Allen Ginsberg, Mad Magazine… social security… I’m such a Boomer.
11. Mr. Bill II — surfin’
Mr. Bill show was sadistically bullied by his God-like creator, Mr. Hands, and Mr. Hands’ surrogate abuser, Sluggo. After all he suffered, Mr. Bill deserves to go surfing on the most famous wave in art history.
12. Poseidon
Poseidon had many, many offspring who took various forms both human and animal and sometimes half and half. One was a giant, cannibalistic, cyclops named Polyphemus. Nobody’s perfect, right?
13. Vincent Price
Vincent price appeared in about 100 movies. Some of titles are: The Invisable Man Returns, Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein, The Fly, The Tingler — my personal favorite -, Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, and… The Trouble with Girls.
14. VAROOM!
My wife has used “varoom” in our Scrabble games. The first time I challenged her, but there it was in the official Scrabble dictionary: “varoom — to run an engine at high speed.” The next time she used it, it still seemed bogus, but I had learned my lesson about challenging it.
15. The bull from Guernica and partial appearance by Mr. Bill
Picasso’s great anti-war painting Guernica depicts the bombing of a Spanish town. When I was in High School in New York the painting was on display at The Museum of Modern Art. I went to see it frequently and have done many drawings of it.
16. Mr Bill in The Twilight Zone
One twilight zone episode is called “The Lonely” It tells of a convict serving out his sentence on an astroid. He is brought Alicia, a beautiful android, for a companion. When his time is up… well it doesn’t end well for Alicia.
17. When Hitchcock met Dalí
In 1945 Alfred Hitchcock made a movie called Spellbound. He recruited Salvador Dalí to design and paint a nightmare scene. Dalí thought the scene was going to last 20 minutes, Hitchcock cut it to 3. Dalí never mentioned the project again.
18. Well drawn gun/poorly drawn gun
Long before I was born, my grandmother was killed by a Savage Model 1907, a semi-automatic pocket pistol produced by the Savage Arms Company from 1907 until 1920. This gun shows up regularly in my artwork.
19. The lovers
Gustav Klimt — The originals have gorgeous colors and intricate patterns, but to me, they are too perfect to be very sexy. That’s my opinion. What do you think?
20. The monster
If you’re blue and you don’t know where to go to
Why don’t you go where fashion sits
Puttin’ on the Ritz
